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Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

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Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#311

Post by the_gipsy »

rlpb wrote: post #179
the_gipsy wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We should have given up eastern Ukraine, negotiate peace. Better surrender a part than destroying the whole country. We get hyperinflation, giving money to USA's weapons industry, general destabilization, and a lot of dead Ukranians. All because it's politically weak to negotiate with Russia. Only Macron tried and he was sadly ridiculed. Does nobody remember how Sarkozy helped with Georgia's peace negotiations?

Is that what you said about Crimea? Where does it stop?

It stops at EU/NATO border.

There is no way to know how Russia will behave exactly, but we DO know that they stopped invading Georgia when some territory was ceded. The USA and Europe behave very differently when invading (Iraq, Afghanistan). It does not help to reduce the conflict into a bad guys/good guys story. People are dying and a whole country might get flattened to rubble.

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#312

Post by theplumber »

cpursley wrote: post #183
theplumber wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We can do without energy from a rough state. We have 1-2 hard years ahead but I believe Europe will rebound stronger. It made no sense to have such close relationships with someone like Putin or be so dependent on fossil fuels. I take it as an opportunity for Europe and the whole world.

1-2 hard years? Do you understand how long the infrastructure for the transition takes to plan, sign off on & build?

It time of war things can go faster than usual. With the right policy the transition speed will increase exponentially. Cheap oil and gas made the transition harder (politically). This crisis could be a blessing in diguisse.

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#313

Post by nathias »

frostburg wrote: post #267
nathias wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

its weird how people who have nothing always have to take care of the bill

Those goalposts are moving quickly. "It's impossible" -> "It's too costly" -> "The wrong people are supposedly footing the cost (without considering the gigantic externalities)" -> "I just want Russia to win"

I never said it is impossible, it's 1. immoral (sanctions are only against civilians) 2. idiotic (destroy your economy for a symbolic gesture) 3. paid by the poorest

It is possible to dislike all empires you know.

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#314

Post by aftbit »

akmarinov wrote: post #67

Break out the coal, boys. It's not like the US is in any way trying to be green. Honestly, China is Earth's best shot at climate change.

Oh yea, China who emitted 2x as much CO2 in 2017 as they did in 2005, vs the US who has been flat since 1990[1]. China who is operating 1100 coal plants vs the US who is operating 240[2]. Sure, China's growing their economy, and they have ~4x as many people as the US, but they are not some bastion of clean green energy or anything.

1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_di...

2: https://www.statista.com/statistics/859266/number-of-coal-po...

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#315

Post by excieve »

mythrwy wrote: post #291
excieve wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're actually quite explicit in what the goal is, at least in propaganda towards the internal audience[0]. If one does equate a Ukrainian to a "nazi" that must be exterminated, burns this into the minds for years, builds a chauvinistic version of history to frame it into then the rest comes out naturally — don't even need an order. The behaviour of the Russian army towards the non-combatants so far has been aligne…

That's unadulterated bullshit and I think both of us know it. "mass rape, mass murder etc". Look, I don't think the Russians are innocent in this at all. Obviously they have economic incentive and don't mind killing some folks to get what they are after. They don't want to kill everyone though or they would act very differently. It's not genocide. Very simple. Even by a stretch of the word to include removing Nazi el…

I think it might be difficult to understand if you're not living in this context yourself.

In this context the Russian soldiers are telling you that you're a "Nazi" because you're speaking Ukrainian, served in the army (no matter how long ago), or have a Ukrainian flag in your home, a tattoo or a haircut they don't like, or just camouflage-styled clothes and therefore don't deserve to live. A shot in the head usually comes after, sometimes worse than that.

This is a story of _each_ village in my area near Kyiv that came under the occupation for just a month. Probably would have been one for my family too if we hadn't fled to safety in time as we'd be considered, in your words, "Nazi elements" too.

Do I really need to link the photos of mass graves, bodies hastily burned to conceal the evidence and accounts of the survivors? Even this is a small fraction as we're not seeing what's happening in the currently occupied areas (there are only some accounts).

How different does it need to be? Does the pointless flattening of Mariupol fall under your definition? Or do we need to wait and see what happens if Russia wins this and there's no real visibility at all?

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#316

Post by nisa »

slaw wrote: post #307
nisa wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

700€/year for heating in a rather modern flat (modernized 15 years ago) add to that 1200€/year for electricity - rent is without heating around 5000€/year here but not a lot of families can stomach a tripling of heating costs and likely growing electricity costs. Consider the price of gas stays at 15ct/kWh that an additional 1500€/year - for most people in Germany a full month of earnings. And my situation is rather…

Rent 400Euro/month is very inexpensive. For me electricity including heating is 1/20 price of rent.

yes, small town, no rent raises in 15 years and owned by the municipal housing association. I guess it would double if on the market again and it would still be reasonable.

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#317

Post by s1artibartfast »

Scarblac wrote: post #295
s1artibartfast wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The same thing holds true for freezing Russia's foreign Reserves. In many ways the EU and Russia are at War. It's just not a shooting War

Yes, that is exactly what is going on. And we can stop "shooting", but then Russia has no incentive to do the same. They would just conclude that they had won.

I think we agree. I'm just surprised by the number of people don't view the situation as EU and russia already in conflict. legal agreements, law, and norms are largely irrelevant when you are fighting a war with another country, and this line is crossed with respect to the EU and Russia.

I still see people saying Russia cant cut off gas, or demand payments in rubles because some contract doesn't allow it. Those contracts went out the window a long time ago.

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#318

Post by dragonwriter »

mythrwy wrote: post #291
excieve wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They're actually quite explicit in what the goal is, at least in propaganda towards the internal audience[0]. If one does equate a Ukrainian to a "nazi" that must be exterminated, burns this into the minds for years, builds a chauvinistic version of history to frame it into then the rest comes out naturally — don't even need an order. The behaviour of the Russian army towards the non-combatants so far has been aligne…

That's unadulterated bullshit and I think both of us know it. "mass rape, mass murder etc". Look, I don't think the Russians are innocent in this at all. Obviously they have economic incentive and don't mind killing some folks to get what they are after. They don't want to kill everyone though or they would act very differently. It's not genocide. Very simple. Even by a stretch of the word to include removing Nazi el…

> It's not genocide. Very simple.

It is genocide, very simple; heck, Putin is pretty up front about the intent to destroy the Ukrainian people as a people, because he views the existence of that identity distinct from Russia as anathema.

And even without Putin’s statements the piles of evidence from the acts on the ground admit no other explanation.

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#319

Post by cpursley »

atlasunshrugged wrote: post #200
cpursley wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, but the sanctions are obviously backfiring on Europeans and not hurting the Russians by any objective measure. I agree on the transition, but where are the bids, construction, etc for new LNG terminals and other replacements? All I see is "Putin bad" talk and no action on what's actually required. But hey, at least no more Russian athletes and violinists!

Europe announced a REPower initiative to speed up investments in alternatives; the problem that they have is that no one wants to build more LNG infrastructure because that's a 20+yr commitment to gas that has some environmental impact and want to go full renewable but this is quite slow to do (and of course is hugely dependent on China which controls the processed critical mineral market). Also, German environmental…

Thanks for the share!

Re: Looming natural gas shortages has the EU scrambling for solutions

#320

Post by btilly »

xglamp wrote: post #300
btilly wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. Absolutely not. You can't understand anything Russia does until you understand that it has a bully's mindset. Anything you negotiate with them just emboldens them to do more to you later. When confronted, they escalate but there is a lot less muscle behind that than it seems. Therefore any negotiation of the kind that you describe will embolden them to reach for more as soon as they think they can. Appeasing Russ…

Isn't understandingwar.org run by the same people who drove the Ukraine into this mess? Who were proponents of multiple wars that the U.S. has lost (Afghanistan being the most recent one)? How would we know what appeasing Russia will do when it has never been tried? Not all wars are like WWII. What if this is the same as the Finnish winter war, where Stalin was eventually content with Karelia and some other small par…

The people who drove Ukraine into this mess are Putin and his cronies. I'm quite sure that they aren't running understandingwar.org.

That said, the organization does have a pro-US military bias, but works to create neutral and factual reporting. If you don't like their bias, you can double check with a variety of other sources with different biases. For example https://www.aljazeera.com/where/ukraine/ does not take a pro-US position.

Also, appeasing Russia HAS been tried. We let them take part of Georgia. We let them take part of Ukraine 8 years ago. We let them have a free hand in Syria. And through that all, we continued to treat them as a normal country. Germany in particular proceeded on a "business as usual" policy. We even raised only minimal objections when they were caught trying to manipulate elections in a variety of countries including the USA. (Without Russian assistance Trump would have never been President.)

The result has been the current full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Offering full support to Ukraine is a reversal of our previous policies.

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